NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden isn’t sitting idle during his self-imposed Russian exile. Rather, he’s planning to get to work building new technology designed to preserve data privacy.

Speaking via Google Hangouts at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference in New York last week, the ex-contractor repeated a call for more security and privacy measures to be embedded into new tech products. Snowden then revealed that he’s planning to contribute to this goal himself, although he refused to divulge any further details on what he’s up to. However, he did request that like-minded hackers work alongside him.

“We the people — you the people, you in this room right now — have both the means and the capability to help build a better future by encoding our rights into the programs and protocols upon which we rely every day,” said Snowden. “And that’s what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in, and I hope you’ll join me … in making that a reality.”

Snowden also took the time to shovel praise upon John Napier Tye, the man who revealed in an op-ed for The Washington Post how the government justifies much of its data collection efforts on Reagan-era presidential executive order #12333.

Once again, Snowden also defended his decision to leak thousands of documents that he appropriated while working as an NSA contractor. “If we’re going to have a democracy and an enlightened citizenry, if we’re going to provide the consent of the governed, we have to know what is going on, we have to know the broad outlines of a policy and we can’t have the government shut us out from every action that they’re doing,” he said. “We have a right as Americans and as members of the global community to know the broad outlines of government policies that significantly impact on our lives.”

He added that most Americans had little clue about the true scale of the US government’s data collection efforts.

Also present during the Hangout was Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked The Pentagon Papers. These documented much of the classified history of US military operations in Vietnam, and were leaked to newspapers back in 1971. In them, it was revealed how the US government had lied to Congress and the US public about the scale of its involvement in the war. The disclosure led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling regarding press freedom.

If you’re interested, you can view Snowden’s entire 90-minute session below.

photo credit: AK Rockefeller via photopin cc